Grosey's Messages

Ecclesiastes 1:1-18 Introduction How to Use Ecclesiastes

Koheleth the Preacher, and Ecclesiastes

God has called all of His people to be communicators. Everyone who is in Christ is called into ministry. As ministers of the manifold grace of God, all of us "clergy and laity" are commissioned with the challenge to communicate our faith to individuals and groups, classes and congregations.

The Bible, God's Word, is the objective basis of the truth of His love and power that we seek to communicate. In response to the urgent, expressed needs of pastors, teachers, Bible study leaders, church school teachers, small group enablers, and individual Christians, we must engage in a penetrating search of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to enable vital personal and practical communication of the abundant life.  But so often we can be tactless, abrasive, one who feels it is his or her calling to fight for the truth with little or no regard for the other fellow's feelings. We debate with rapid-fire Scripture quotations. But Proverbs 18:19 A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city,  And contentions are like the bars of a citadel. 

"The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer," wrote Solomon. "That which turns away wrath is a gentle answer."  The wise person uses his tongue to "make knowledge acceptable," the king added. And who could ever forget the impact of the proverb that says:  "The tongue of the wise brings healing" . . . or "a man has joy in an apt answer, and how delightful is a timely word!"

There's a TV ad for a first-aid ointment that says, "Stop hurting . . . start healing." Another offers a bandage that takes the "ouch" away.

Solomon (for I think it is Solomon who wrote Ecclesiastes towards the end of his life), introduces us to the dilemmas he faced as a worldly man, someone who lived "under the sun" without regard for God, that drove him to despair and finally drove him back to God.

Creation, time, meaning, work, profit, piety, death, joy, grace, freedom, vanity; these are his themes. There is nothing trivial or trite among them. To understand any would exhaust the wisdom of Solomon. In fact Koheleth reached back to Solomon's experiences of wisdom, pleasure, and achievement and used them as the core of his curriculum. And they make an incredible learning experience. Does life have meaning?is the question. Besides, his dread of death captures their mood precisely. Koheleth insists that we recognize that. Further more, his warnings about overvaluing the techniques of wisdom or the pleasures of materialism have volumes to say to our modern society, where most of us are as attached to our possessions as is the rest of society. The Old Testament offers no clearer mirror to face our generation with our problems than the twelve chapters of Ecclesiastes.

The meaning of the theme word hebel, variously translated vanity, futility, meaninglessness, mystery, enigma, absurdity, irony, brevity, and the like, allows us to get inside the mindset of the modern person, who has got trapped into idols of the heart that leave life meaningless and empty.

Blaise Pascal "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every [person] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ."

^1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

"I can't get no satisfaction though I try and I try and I try"

"I became very famous, even greater than anyone who had lived in Jerusalem before me. My wisdom helped me in all this.  Anything I saw and wanted, I got for myself; I did not miss any pleasure I desired. I was pleased with everything I did, and this pleasure was the reward for all my hard work." Eccl. 2:9,10

But then I looked at what I had done, and I thought about all the hard work. Suddenly I realized it was useless, like chasing the wind. There is nothing to gain from anything we do here on earth." Eccl. 2:11

"Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!" Eccl. 5:10

Here is an elderly Solomon who has repented and come back to the Lord reflecting on his journey back. Philosophy asks: Is there a thesis that will harmonize reality and around which the whole universe will coalesce—from the largest star to the smallest insect? Does anything hold this world together? Does anything make sense of life and tell us what's the use of living?

This is a book with the truest kind of credibility because King Solomon had tried both philosophical avenues. He began with God, and then he departed from God—and now, in his old age he was able to compare the two pathways.

Well, when we are sharing Jesus with others we need to take the message of Ecclesiastes into account.

1. Everybody without Christ has a sense of emptiness and purposelessness.
2. Finding the person's hole in the heart can give you a good opportunity tatfully, carefully, lovingly under the guidance of God to share the gospel with someone.

Last week while down in Canberra I accidently had the opportunity to share with a cleaner who recovering from bitterness over her sexuality, her excommunication from the JW's and several other hurts. As we taked I had opportunity to show her how God in His mercy and compassion was reaching into her life to show her the Lord Jesus Christ as her Saviour and redeemer.

3. The power of a personal testimony.

A Princely Soul

The course of Solomon's life—and perhaps something recognizably yours—can be traced in the three biblical books that were his legacy.

In the morning of his life came the Song of Solomon, a prose rhapsody of passionate romance.

In the noontime of his life came Proverbs, a book of heavenly rules for earthly living on the Main Streets of the world.

Finally, in the evening of his life came Ecclesiastes, a regretful retrospective. In the disillusioned autumn of his years, Solomon revisited the wreckage of a wasted life. The proverbial pithiness purged, he made one final stab at redemption: an attempt to block others from his own perilous downhill road to destruction.

"It's what we learn after we know it all that really counts," someone once said. If Ecclesiastes were a movie, the posters might read, "Solomon is back—and this time it's personal."

Ecclesiastes is indeed a personal book. Solomon personally presided over a forty-year season of peace. Free of the consuming rigors of military command, he had time to think and write.

He had personally accumulated the wealth of an empire. The riches of the world were at his disposal, as well as the counsel of kings across the Mediterranean world.

Above all, Solomon had navigated life as the most intelligent and well-educated man of his time. He writes: "I communed with my heart, saying, 'Look, I have attained greatness, and have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem. My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge.' And I set my heart to know wisdom" (Ecclesiastes 1:16–17).

A Perverted Soul

But he declined. 1 Kings 9: 1 And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD and the king's house, and all Solomon's desire which he wanted to do, 2 that the LORD appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 And the LORD said to him: "I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before Me; I have consecrated this house which you have built to put My name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. 4 Now if you walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, 5 then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, 'You shall not fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.' 6 But if you or your sons at all turn from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7 then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them; and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight. Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 8 And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and will hiss, and say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?' 9 Then they will answer, 'Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore the LORD has brought all this calamity on them.' "  10 Now it happened at the end of twenty years, when Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king's house 11 (Hiram the king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress and gold, as much as he desired), that King Solomon then gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. 12 Then Hiram went from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him, but they did not please him. 13 So he said, "What kind of cities are these which you have given me, my brother?" And he called them the land of Cabul, as they are to this day. 14 Then Hiram sent the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold.

Hebel.  Hiram cabul

Horses  1 Kings 10: 26 And Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen; he had one thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen, whom he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king at Jerusalem. 27 The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and he made cedar trees as abundant as the sycamores which are in the lowland. 28 Also Solomon had horses imported from Egypt and Keveh; the king's merchants bought them in Keveh at the current price. 29 Now a chariot that was imported from Egypt cost six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse one hundred and fifty; and thus, through their agents, they exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria.

Harlots 1 Kings 11:1 But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites --- 2 from the nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, "You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods." Solomon clung to these in love. 3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 4 For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not fully follow the LORD, as did his father David. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. 8 And he did likewise for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. 9 So the LORD became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the LORD God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, 10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the LORD had commanded. 11 Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, "Because you have done this, and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant.

A Purposeless Soul

Ecclesiastes 1: The Vanity of Life A woman once told her pastor, "When I confess my sins, I confess the sin of vanity most of all. Every morning, I admire myself in the mirror for half an hour." To this the pastor replied, "My dear, that isn't the sin of vanity. You're suffering from the sin of imagination." Solomon climbed the ladder of success only to find there at when he reached the top there was nothing there. There's nothing here; all is vanity. His repetition of the word vanity was a Hebrew poetic device that intensified meaning. "Life is utterly, absolutely, totally meaningless."

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest. Hillary was asked what he felt when he reached the peak. Hillary replied that there was an immediate rush of triumphal ecstasy—for a fleeting moment. It was quickly replaced by a sense of desolation. Where could he go from here? What mountains remained to climb?'  Solomon spent forty years on the roof of history, only to feel the same bland puzzle of anticlimax. Not only is it empty at the top, but it's empty at the bottom—and everywhere in-between. Life, in and of itself, is a cluster of electrons silently coursing through their appointed atomic revolutions; cells dividing and redividing; nature recycling its rituals ad infinitum. Emptiness. Vanity. As Peggy Lee used to sing, "Is that all there is?" or "I can't get no satisfaction!"

As Tim Keller points out, the author of Ecclesiastes is pushing us to the logical conclusion of our position, exposing any philosophy that would seek to live life without God as the ultimate foundation. If this life is all there is, then what permanent value is your life? Keller explains that we ask the question, What's in it for me? in the small things, but we do not seem to ask it over the whole of our life. If I told you to show up in the parking lot tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m., you would ask "Why?" If I said, "Just show up," then you would reply, "What's in it for me? Why should I come? What will I be doing?" And yet, we do not ask those questions of our lives. What's the overall profit to what I am doing (Keller, "Problem of Meaning")? The author's point is that if this life is all there is, then there is no profit to your life. The poem in Ecclesiastes 1:4-11 points to repetitive cycles in nature to prove the point that nothing is gained from all our activity. Like a good sage Solomon observes nature in order to extrapolate wisdom for our lives. The natural cycles demonstrate that all our activity is pointless because nothing changes despite a whole lot of activity. The poem paints the picture that we are trapped in a monotonous prison (Garrett, Ecclesiastes, 284).

A Penitent Soul

And that brings us to our conclusion. But I want to end my message today by telling you what I believe to be the rest of the story. Evidently late in his life Solomon made a right turn. The prologue of Ecclesiastes is not the conclusion of Ecclesiastes. The prologue sets forth the philosophical enigma of life, but the rest of the book works on resolving the puzzle. And the epilogue gives us the conclusion. Ecclesiastes 12:13 says: Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

It seems clear to me that in the last years of his life, King Solomon realized how his atheism and secularism and backsliding had devastated his soul and he turned back to the Lord. The book of Ecclesiastes represents the university course he developed to teach young people the importance of finding the one working philosophy for life that really works.

One of the Targums of the Jews says :When King Solomon was sitting upon the throne of his kingdom, his heart became greatly elated with riches, and he transgressed the commandment of the Word of God; and he gathered many houses, and chariots, and riders, and he amassed much gold and silver, and he married wives from foreign nations. Whereupon the anger of the Lord was kindled against him, and he sent to him Ashmodai, the king of the demons, and he drove him from the throne of his kingdom, and took away the ring from his hand, in order that he should roam and wander about in the world, to reprove it; and he went about the provincial towns and cities in the land of Israel, weeping and lamenting, and saying, "I am Coheleth, whose name was formerly called Solomon, who was King over Israel in Jerusalem."

There is no reference to this period in Scripture, so this may not be trustworthy. But it may be true. There is suggestion in Scripture that there came a time when King Solomon saw the folly of what he was doing, and repented. This book is his considered proclamation from a chastened mind of what he had learned from life. This is not an angry young man speaking. These are the words of a man who has been through it all and is sharing with us what he found in his search.

Did he find an answer? Did he find that key to life that makes everything yield up its treasure of joy? The answer to that is, Yes, he did, and he tells us the answer in this book. But his answer is not what he has started out with here. What he found "under the sun" was emptiness, but he went on to find something more than that. That is what this book declares.

A Preaching Soul

 The traditional name of this book, Ecclesiastes, and the author's title in verse 1, "Preacher," both come from the same Hebrew term: qohelet. This term described one who convened an assembly of wise men and served as its principal spokesman. Solomon chose this as his pen name for Ecclesiastes. Perhaps instead of the "Preacher," we might call Solomon the "Searcher" or the "Quester."

1:2     Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,

                  vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

Romans 8:19-23 For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope;

Blaise Pascal was without equal, a brilliant French thinker, scientist, mathematician, and inventor. As a boy in Paris, his remarkable grasp of mathematics led to his involvement with the Academy of Science, where he mingled with the greatest intellectuals of his day. At fifteen, he was writing books and developing theorems that left his professors shaking their heads. As a teenager, he invented history's first digital calculating machine; other discoveries led to the invention of the barometer, the vacuum pump, the air compressor, the syringe, and the hydraulic press.

But as a young man, Pascal had trouble with the spiritual equations of life, and he soon grew disillusioned with the pleasures of his fashionable society. Everything seemed boring to him. Nothing was fresh or fulfilling. One night Pascal picked up a Bible and turned to John 17. As he began reading, verse 3 blazed out like a spark and seemed to set the room on fire: "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." His soul instantly took wing, and he was in the permanent embrace of Jesus Christ. Taking pen and parchment, he began quickly writing snatches of his thoughts:

In the year of Grace, 1654  On Monday, 23rd of November      Fire  God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,  not of the philosophers and scholars.  Certitude. Certitude, Feeling, Joy. Peace.  Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.  This is eternal life, that they may know You, the Only true God,  and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.  Jesus Christ. Let me never be separated from Him.

Pascal spent the rest of his life proclaiming the greatness of God. That scrap of parchment was found after his death sewed into the lining of his coat, that it might ever be close to his heart. It was this same Pascal who echoed the words of Ecclesiastes: "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that cannot be filled by any created thing, but by God alone made known through Jesus Christ."9 Anything else would be the equivalent of forcing a square peg into a round hole. None but Christ can fill that hole, though men spend their lives trying every other possibility in vain. But the moment the rightful Lord of your soul fills its vacuum, there will be a fullness such as you never knew could be possible under the sun.

Ecclesiastes cannot be rightly understood without the conclusion. The bleak outlook of the parts can only be understood in light of the whole that is wrapped up in the conclusion (12:8-14). The conclusion starts with the main point that everything is meaningless by repeating hevel as a wrap up (12:8), and then it calls the Teacher a wise man who arranged his writing with great care (12:9). The words of the book are delightful and true (12:10), that is, they give a true portrait of how the world works. His words are like goads (12:11). A goad is a herding tool used to poke and prod livestock in the right direction. The author compares the words of Ecclesiastes with this cattle prod because metaphorically the words of the sage are meant to sting and convict, and thus they move the reader in the right direction of walking in wisdom.

The ultimate Author of Ecclesiastes—the Spirit of God—uses the words of the book to convict the human heart of its need for Jesus. These words are given by "one Shepherd" (12:11). Only three other places in the Bible speak of a single shepherd, and each refers to the Messiah (Ezek 34:23-24; 37:24-25; John 10:11-16) (Perrin, "Messianism," 51–57). Ecclesiastes is therefore a messianic book that points to and longs for the Messiah to come and order His kingdom by wisdom.

Ecclesiastes reminds us of the crises of life and how these raise the questions that enable us to share Jesus without fear into others problems and others distresses.

Someone wisely said to me, when you are sharing the gospel with someone, look for the hole in the heart.

The hole in the heart is that crisis of life that the person is undergoing at that time.

It is the connecting point that can move a person from "under the sun living" that is worldly and without concern for the things of God, to being a person who fears God, and enters into a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." John 6:51

^{John 10:10} The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive... It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord." (Christmas message, 2011)